Internet is in danger of being ...

The battle for " ruling " the Internet has really broke out between the US and other countries around the world. The US wants to continue to dominate the Internet while other countries require more control.

The Council of Europe warns that if the parties do not reach an agreement in the conference in Tunisia next month, it is likely that the Internet will be broken down.

The problem comes from the supervision role of the US government for DNS domain management system ( Domain Name System ).

DNS can be considered as the address book of the Internet, in which each IP address is assigned with an address in words to make it easy to remember. For example, Google has an IP address 216.239.37.99 corresponding to the DNS address www.google.com.

Not just a collection of people's Internet addresses, DNS divides the address according to the area it operates, called domain (domain), allowing Internet communication to be done quickly and efficiently.

Currently the DNS system is managed by non-profit ICANN company ( The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ). ICANN decides who works on top-level domain names such as .com, .org or .vn, and is responsible for allocating space on the Internet. The company was established in California under the license of the US Department of Commerce. Therefore ICANN must comply with California state law.

All decisions of ICANN are advised by the GAC Government Advisory Council ( Governmental Advisory Committee ). In fact, GAC is more pressure on ICANN than the US Department of Commerce. GAC reviews all requests for domain names, while the Ministry of Commerce has not once intervened in the company's decision.

Many governments say they need a place where all the leaders in the world are free to express their opinions about the Internet, but ICANN is under the control of the US government, so they are impressed by Internet is dominated only by a country.

A meeting was held in Geneva last month to gather opinions of politicians around this issue. Europe's plan to open Internet management rights to developing countries faces strong resistance from the US.

Viviane Reding, information commissioner of the Commonwealth Council of Europe, said: 'If the parties do not reach a multilateral agreement, countries like Russia, China, Brazil, and some Arab countries will most likely build the Internet. their own. And so the nature is everywhere, what makes the Internet's magic disappear. '

The US believes that many governments are not democratic, so it is impossible to build such an open Internet.

Michaek Gallagher, President Bush's Internet adviser, and chief executive officer of US communications, believes they are holding the Internet heart, the only heart that helps it work. 'People are targeting control, they think DNS is all life. But life is based on territorial boundaries and the policies they establish there. '

The US government created the Internet in the 1960s, intending to maintain ICANN's oversight role, abandoning its commitment during the Clinton period.

David Gross, head of the US delegation at Geneva conference, said 'an untested Internet management model will be able to break more than 250,000 computer networks using the TCP / IP protocol, with more than 1 billion participants. over 27 billion daily transport sessions'

'The Internet has been considered a reliable and stable network of network types. The Internet has grown at an unprecedented pace in human history . What we are expecting is the Internet's technological revolution. We don't think creating or using multilateral institutions in controlling the Internet is a way to accelerate technological advances. '

Domain name - the focus of every controversy

According to Emily Taylor, policy and legal director at Nominet, which manages domains with .co or .org domains, all controversies at the Geneva conference revolve around the highest domain name (top-level domain). ).

Although DNS is a distributed system, it needs a starting point, a list of places where Internet addresses start. The list is called root zone file, including 248 top-level domains in country codes such as .vn, .kr, .uk . and 14 top-level domains according to the scope of activities such as .com, .net, .org. Root zone files determine who runs on which domain and start searching for them from. In the world, there are only 13 Servers holding this list, including 10 in the US.

ICANN Director General, Paul Twomey shared many concerns with the US government. He said: 'We always want to be progressive and dynamic. We are responsible for the stability of the Internet and we think that is the best way to develop existing systems. Our corporate structure today is a product of history, not of any special design. '

Management - just a minor issue

Two weeks ago, Europe launched a "collaborative model" to deal with ICANN and a forum so that governments could debate Internet management.

European plans are supported by China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and many other countries. At the same time, some European politicians were skeptical. 'Controversy over the issue of ruling the Internet is a small affair, while Europe is allowing other countries to draw towards the US, and the This will put Europe in a risky situation. ' Other politicians are clear: they are "completely opposed to controlling the content of the Internet." The role of Europe is different from that of China or Brazil. "And they do not compromise with any suggestions from those countries .

Although it does not like the way the US dominates the Internet, Argentina and Canada have expressed concern if the Internet opens management rights to all countries. Just before the conference in the 3-day Tunisia, all officials' opinions will be collected to argue thoroughly and frankly about Internet management.

It seems that the ' never diving ' period on the Internet is about to end. Although the decision from the CIS conference may not have any legal meaning, the binding between ICANN and the US government will end at the end of September next year, by which time its operation is completely independent of government.

Mr. Gallagher said 'We will not bureaucracy, politicize or pull back the development of DNS. We didn't agree with that in November and we didn't do it in September next year. '